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FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
“That or thereabouts. I’m lately come to this place.”
“A large farm?” she inquired, casting her eyes round, and
swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour past sunrise the rays
touched its prominent curves with a colour of their own.
“No; not large. About a hundred.” (In speaking of farms the
word “acres” is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old
expressions as “a stag of ten.”)
“I wanted my hat this morning,” she went on. “I had to ride
to Tewnell Mill.”
“Yes you had.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw you.”
“Where?” she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle
of her lineaments and frame to a standstill.
“Here – going through the plantation, and all down the
hill,” said Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing
with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to
meet his colloquist’s eyes.
A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from
hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing
through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face. It was a time to see a woman
redden who was not given to reddening as a rule; not a point
in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. From the
Maiden’s Blush, through all varieties of the Provence down to
the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak’s acquaintance
31
THOMAS HARDY
quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness, turned
away his head.
The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she would recover coolness suffi cient to justify
him in facing her again. He heard what seemed to be the fl itting of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked. She had gone
away.
With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel
returned to his work.
Five mornings and evenings passed. The young woman
came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick
one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction of
Oak’s person. His want of tact had deeply offended her – not
by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her know that
he had seen it. For, as without law there is no sin, without eyes
there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel that Gabriel’s
espial had made her an indecorous woman without her own
connivance. It was food for great regret with him; it was also
a contretemps which touched into life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction.
The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a
slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end
of the same week. One afternoon it began to freeze, and the
frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy
tightening of bonds. It was a time when in cottages the breath
of the sleepers freezes to the sheets; when round the drawingroom fi re of a thick-walled mansion the sitters’ backs are cold,
even whilst their faces are all aglow. Many a small bird went to
bed supperless that night among the bare boughs.
32
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch
upon the cowshed. At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra
quantity of bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the
hut and heaped more fuel upon the stove. The wind came in at
the bottom of the door, and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there
and wheeled the cot round a little more to the south. Then the
wind spouted in at a ventilating hole – of which there was one
on each side of the hut.
Gabriel had always known that when the fi re was lighted
and the door closed one of these must be kept open – that
chosen being always on the side away from the wind. Closing
the slide to windward, he turned to open the other; on second
thoughts the farmer considered that he would fi rst sit down
leaving both closed for a minute or two, till the temperature
of the hut was a little raised. He sat down.
His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then
allow himself to fall asleep. He fell asleep, however, without
having performed the necessary preliminary.
How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew.
During the fi rst stages of his return to perception peculiar
deeds seemed to be in course of enactment. His dog was howling, his head was aching fearfully – somebody was pulling him
about, hands were loosening his neckerchief.
On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to
dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl
with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside
him. More than this – astonishingly more – his head was
33
THOMAS HARDY
upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her
fi ngers were unbuttoning his collar.
“Whatever is the matter?” said Oak, vacantly.
She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignifi cant a
kind to start enjoyment.
“Nothing now,” she answered, “since you are not dead. It is
a wonder you were not suffocated in this hut of yours.”
“Ah, the hut!” murmured Gabriel. “I gave ten pounds for
that hut. But I’ll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they
did in old times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw! It played
me nearly the same trick the other day!” Gabriel, by way of
emphasis, brought down his fi st upon the fl oor.
“It was not exactly the fault of the hut,” she observed in a
tone which showed her to be that novelty among women –
one who fi nished a thought before beginning the sentence
which was to convey it. “You should, I think, have considered,
and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed.”
“Yes I suppose I should,” said Oak, absently. He was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus
with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on
into the heap of bygone things. He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an
odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of
his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained
silent.
She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face
and shaking himself like a Samson. “How can I thank ‘ee?” he
said at last, gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having
returned to his face.
34
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
“Oh, never mind that,” said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for Gabriel’s next remark, whatever
that might prove to be.
“How did you fi nd me?”
“I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the
hut when I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy’s milking is almost over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the next). The dog saw me, and jumped over to
me, and laid hold of my skirt. I came across and looked round
the hut the very fi rst thing to see if the slides were closed. My
uncle has a hut like this one, and I have heard him tell his
shepherd not to go to sleep without leaving a slide open. I
opened the door, and there you were like dead. I threw the
milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting it was warm,
and no use.”
“I wonder if I should have died?” Gabriel said, in a low
voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than
to her.
“Oh no!” the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic
probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that
should harmonise with the dignity of such a deed – and she
shunned it.
“I believe you saved my life, Miss – I don’t know your name.
I know your aunt’s, but not yours.”
“I would just as soon not tell it – rather not. There is no
reason either why I should, as you probably will never have
much to do with me.”
“Still, I should like to know.”
“You can inquire at my aunt’s – she will tell you.”
“My name is Gabriel Oak.”
35
THOMAS HARDY
“And mine isn’t. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so
decisively, Gabriel Oak.”
“You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must
make the most of it.”
“I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable.”
“I should think you might soon get a new one.”
“Mercy! – how many opinions you keep about you concerning other people, Gabriel Oak.”
“Well, Miss – excuse the words – I thought you would like
them. But I can’t match you, I know, in mapping out my mind
upon my tongue. I never was very clever in my inside. But I
thank you. Come, give me your hand.”
She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak’s old-fashioned earnest conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on.
“Very well,” she said, and gave him her hand, compressing her
lips to a demure impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in
his fear of being too demonstrative, swerved to the opposite
extreme, touching her fi ngers with the lightness of a smallhearted person.
“I am sorry,” he said the instant after.
“What for?”
“Letting your hand go so quick.”
“You may have it again if you like; there it is.” She gave him
her hand again.
Oak held it longer this time – indeed, curiously long. “How
soft it is – being winter time, too – not chapped or rough or
anything!” he said.
“There – that’s long enough,” said she, though without
pulling it away. “But I suppose you are thinking you would
like to kiss it? You may if you want to.”
36
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
“I wasn’t thinking of any such thing,” said Gabriel, simply;
“but I will – “
“That you won’t!” She snatched back her hand.
Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact.
“Now fi nd out my name,” she said, teasingly; and withdrew.
37
CHAPTER 4
GABRIEL’S RESOLVE –
THE VISIT – THE MISTAKE
The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival
sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority
which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting
possibilities of capture to the subordinated man.
This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer
Oak.
Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profi t, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the
bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profi t, bodily or
materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every
morning Oak’s feelings were as sensitive as the money-market
in calculations upon his chances. His dog waited for his meals
in a way so like that in which Oak waited for the girl’s presence, that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance,
felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. However, he
continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming,
and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened without
any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oak
had nothing fi nished and ready to say as yet, and not being
38
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
able to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales –
– Full of sound and fury,
– Signifying nothing –
he said no word at all.
By making inquiries he found that the girl’s name was
Bathsheba Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about
seven days. He dreaded the eighth day.
At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give
milk for that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill
no more. Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never
could have anticipated a short time before. He liked saying “Bathsheba” as a private enjoyment instead of whistling;
turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by
brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space
he fi lled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love is a
possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms
a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and
happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in this direction,
and said to himself, “I’ll make her my wife, or upon my soul I
shall be good for nothing!”
All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand
on which he might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba’s
aunt.
He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of
a living lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter
constitution – a fi ne January morning, when there was just
enough blue sky visible to make cheerfully-disposed people
wish for more, and an occasional gleam of silvery sunshine,
39
THOMAS HARDY
Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday basket, and stalked
across the fi elds to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the aunt – George,
the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great concern
at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking.
Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from
the chimney with strange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down the chimney to the spot of its origin – seen
the hearth and Bathsheba beside it – beside it in her out-door
dress; for the clothes she had worn on the hill were by association equally with her person included in the compass of his
affection; they seemed at this early time of his love a necessary
ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba Everdene.
He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind – of a nature between the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate – of
a degree between fi ne-market-day and wet-Sunday selection.
He thoroughly cleaned his silver watch-chain with whiting,
put new lacing straps to his boots, looked to the brass eyeletholes, went to the inmost heart of the plantation for a new
walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his way back; took
a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box, put
on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an elegant fl ower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the defects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed
upon his usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till
he had deepened it to a splendidly novel colour, between that
of guano and Roman cement, making it stick to his head like
mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a boulder after
the ebb.
Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal
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